61 confirmed dead in Brazil plane crash

A plane with 61 people on board crashed on Friday in a residential area in the Brazilian municipality of Vinhedo, in the state of São Paulo, in an accident in which there were no survivors.

The device, from the airline Voepass, It fell vertically, spinning around itself, until it crashed into an area of ​​vegetation within a residential development, near a home.

There were no survivors among the 61 occupants of the plane, including 57 passengers and 4 crew members.according to Brazilian authorities.

Initially, Authorities said there were 62 passengers on the flight, but hours later The airline corrected the information, lowering the death toll to 61as confirmed by the director of the National Civil Aviation Agency (ANAC), Luiz Ricardo de Souza, at a press conference in Brasilia.

Colonel Cássio de Araújo de Freitas, from the Military Police of São Paulo, assured that There were no casualties on the ground because the plane crashed in “an empty area” within the Recanto Florido condominium, a high-end urbanization.

The aircraft, a twin-engine ATR-72-500 model, was making the journey between the city of Cascavel and São Paulo. and crashed shortly before 1:25 p.m. local time (4:25 p.m. GMT), when it was about 80 kilometers from reaching Guarulhos airport, its destination.

The plane was flying at an altitude of around 3,500 metres and crashed in about a minute, according to data from the specialist website Flightradar.

The vertical fall was filmed from various angles by several residents of Vinhedo, in videos that were widely shared on social media.

Several witnesses said they heard a loud bang before seeing the plane crash.

The accident triggered a fire that has since been extinguished, although firefighters continued working hours later to cool the fuselage.

The Center for Investigation and Prevention of Aeronautical Accidents (Cenipa) and the Federal Police have opened separate investigations to determine the causes of the accident.

Investigators have already located the plane’s black boxes, Cenipa reported.

According to Flightradar, the plane had made two more flights on Friday morning before the crash.

Minutes after the news broke, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva expressed his regret for the accident and called for a minute of silence in tribute to the victims.

The Brazilian president learned of the accident while he was preparing to give a speech at an event in the municipality of Itajai, in the state of Santa Catarina, and interrupted the event to express his regret.

“I have very bad news to share with you and I would like to ask everyone to stand and observe a minute of silence because a plane has just crashed in the city of Vinhedo, in São Paulo, with 58 passengers and 4 crew members, and it seems that everyone has died,” Lula told the audience.

This is the most serious air accident to occur on Brazilian soil since 2007, when a TAM airline flight crashed into a warehouse after leaving the runway at São Paulo’s Congonhas airport, killing 199 people.

In 2009, a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris crashed into the Atlantic Ocean in international waters, killing all 216 people on board.

61 confirmed dead in Brazil plane crash